From ...
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: free lisp compilers?
Date: 1999/09/03
Message-ID: <3145309248987060@naggum.no>#1/1
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* Bagheera, the jungle scout
| Anything you can do in lisp, I can do in C++.
sure, but I think people generally expect you to do it in finite time.
| So I am at an empasse. I want an affordable lisp compiler for Windows,
| or an INTELLIGENT explanation of why it is worth what companies charge
| for it (on average, it is about 3x the cost of a GOOD professional C++
| compiler).
well, assume most companies pay their programmers a lot of money. if you
could save 50% on the time it took to complete a project, that'd be worth
half a lot of money, which equals _way_ more than the difference between
the cost of the compilers.
the reason most managers don't believe it is that they don't actually
know what their programmers spend their time on or that it could be spent
much more wisely. incidentally, doubling he programmer efficiency is
considered weak performance, but it's what you'll get for the first
project or two. with very experienced programmers in both C++ and Lisp,
you get a factor of 3 to 5 improvement in Lisp's favor, but with people
who have spent a year learning their respective language, you should
expect a factor 5 to 10 improvement in Lisp's favor. the irony is that
it's harder to find very experienced C++ programmers than to find very
experienced Lisp programmers, and they cost a _lot_ more.
also, a single good Lisp programmer can easily do more than 20 moderately
good C++ programmers in the same time. the reason is team communication
overhead, which is necessary because doing C++ stuff all alone is too
hard, and you also need to finish in reasonable amount of time. that's
why you don't see a lot of advertising for Lisp folks, but a whole lot of
advertising for C++ folks.
#:Erik
--
save the children: just say NO to sex with pro-lifers